Logically, I'm really supposed to put this blog on hold and instead focus all my efforts on my thesis projects so I can graduate and move on with life. However, I find myself having this uncontrollable urge to dump all my miscellaneous, entangled, trivial thoughts from my brain into this blog. The irrational part of my mind (for a lack of a better label) seems to find this thoughts-sorting process more important than my thesis.
I didn't really have this problem before. I used to dread any sort of writing, even if it was a personal diary. My personal diary entries read like an unimaginative child writing pieces of assignments to be handed in to the teacher. "Today I went to the zoo with my mommy and daddy. The giraffes were pretty. We took lots of pictures. I had a wonderful day." And I would get an A+ for entries like this (hmm.. I guess they weren't personal diaries at all but actual assignments). I blame my elementary school teachers for encouraging me to write in a non-expressive and uncreative way. Actually, I don't even blame them. I don't know how they can read through 60+ of these every week. Maybe the formulaic writings were easier to mark than the ones that tried to be different but failed in terms of sentence structures, diction and character correctness (I went through my elementary school education in Taiwan in Chinese only, no English).
In high school (I had moved to Canada by then), my worse subjects were English and Physical Education. By "worst" meant I got C+'s in the beginning when I hadn't fully grasped the language and then from grade 9 and onwards I got B's. I really disliked these two subjects because of the grades I received (this way of thinking was imposed by me not my mother). Obviously (to westerners at least) this is not a healthy way of deciding what you like or dislike, but I hadn't realize this until recently. In fact, I probably got B's because I wasn't expressive enough. I remember always having trouble meeting the minimal essay length, which was usually something like 500 words. I spent a lot of efforts trying to make each sentence as wordy as possible because I didn't have much to say. I'm really regretting that practice because now I have the opposite problem: I now tend to ramble on and on in all my writings and have trouble keep my sentences concise (as you may have noticed in my blog entries ;-) .
In college, I went into science because #1: I wanted to be a scientist ever since I was a little kid. I think I imagined a stereotypical "scientist" to be a combination of an astronaut + CSI guy + The Crocodile Hunter. That would be a pretty cool job, actually. #2: My favorite teacher in high school was my biology teacher, and he said microbiology had a great future outlook so that was what I chose to major, even though I hated my 1st and 2nd year biology courses. #3: There was no paper or essay writing for any of the classes in science! So I got my Bachelor's degree without needing to write a single essay, besides the few I had to write for a mandatory 1st year English class.
And then comes graduate school, where suddenly the entire process is all about writing: statement of purpose, scholarship applications, thesis proposals, progress reports, the thesis itself, research papers, poster abstracts, formal emails (I never needed to write any formal letters to people back in undergrad either). Considering the fact that the majority of my undergraduate education consisted of memorization and regurgitation on exams, and considering the fact that I can remember hardly any of the knowledge that are not useful for my current project (sometimes even the useful info have been forgotten), I'm seriously questioning the usefulness of my education up to this point.
Seeing that I've invested almost all my efforts on my education my entire life, and realizing that it has been mostly pointless, perhaps my subconscious decision-making center is making me sort out my thoughts out before I'm allowed to use my brain power to complete my degree (or maybe I just get easily distracted. Excuses excuses). My apologies to my blog reader that my entries are often long-winded and seems to go in too many different directions without a main point. I wrote them without really having my audience in mind (sorry), bur rather to sort out my personal confusions.
Does this have anything to do with yoga? Hell yah! I just know I always have a strong desire to blog after I've done a yoga class. This was never the case with any other activities. Because of all these "limbs" of yoga that I'm supposed to read up about and associations with Buddhism and meditation and bodily sensations and yoga history and so on, I find myself needing to sort out all the rush of information of this new realm of subject that I think are so important to life yet I knew nothing about before. This gets me to thinking about the purpose of life, and what have I done with mine so far, etc etc. Damn you Yoga for opening up a whole can of worms!!!!
(Just kidding. Yoga got me through my most depressed stage of grad school. Please don't get mad at me, Yoga. I hope my future practices of You will still be enjoyable. Amen.)
Showing posts with label grad school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grad school. Show all posts
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
New Year's Reflection
2010 was the year that I found yoga. I completely immersed myself in this activity, practicing 2-5 times/week for the entire year, trying out various styles (Hatha, yin, Anusara, Ashtanga, Power yoga, Hot yoga, pilates, etc. etc. etc). I read yoga journal articles and yoga books almost daily (often at school); I went to yoga workshops and even attended a yoga conference. It was a lovely experience by the way. Senior teachers are such lovely people, and the experience taught me to pick alignment principles that fits me personally rather than adhering to a certain yoga style, since different styles often have directly opposing instructions for certain asanas. I also started looking at other activities related to yoga and wellness - using myself as a guinea pig to try out acupuncture, chiropractic, various styles of massages, sound therapy (Tibetan singing bowls / harmonium / chanting), meditation, and everything science dismisses as "alternative", ie. "that which has not been shown consistently to be effective". Can you say obsessive compulsive? I had so much fun doing this though, at the expense of neglecting my thesis.
Don't get me wrong; I still believe in the value of science. In the alternative therapy/holistic wellness world both practitioners and patients / customers / students seem to have a lot of difficulty distinguishing between the effective aspects from the completely BS aspects. It's just that being so rigorous, a scientific study first has to reduce any problem into a simple testable situation where all variables except for one are controlled. Not all problems can be simplified this way, especially with alternative therapies, where results are based on subjective patient experience. Neither the problems (say, chronic discomfort/pain) nor the solutions (a reduction in some aspects of the discomfort) can be easily measured by an instrument. In many cases, the simple fact that the practitioner paid attention to the patient / customer / student and/or simple human touch can reduce discomfort.
So, uh, why was I doing this again? I think I just got really sick of the BS in academia. Also, studying a single topic that no one around me cares about (both in every day life and even within my lab/school) became hell three years into my studies. I was in serious depression for a long time, while my family just thought I was a spoiled brat acting up. Once I found yoga, the amount of available reference materials, company and support made this activity seemed like a 7-star all-inclusive resort, and I hurled myself at it. People who don't practice yoga still didn't care about my new-found passion, but at least there's a classroom of people + an online community that shared my obsession.
Yoga provided comfort and pampering when I was feeling emotionally isolated and helpless. But it couldn't help me focus on my project. It took this grand trip to provide me the motivation to really want to finish my grad student way of living and move on with life. It was really hard to focus toward the end of last year. All I could think of all day long was my evening yoga classes. I hope this year I can actually focus on my thesis during day time and only think about yoga during the actual yoga classes. Nobel mentioned about energy levels being low on days without yoga practice. My energy level hypes up after yoga in the evening, but if I practice yoga in the morning, I often need a nap afterwards. I noticed that while I was traveling, my energy level and alertness could be quite high throughout the day for many days in a row. I think it's because of all the stimulations of new surroundings, plus the fact that the tour leader took all the stressful factors (finding transportation and accommodation, planning the itinerary, considering safety issues) out of my trip. I was so "awake" and so receptive to new sights, smell, and hearing for such a prolonged period of time at once, it was like being on drugs without the side effects.
Now that I am back home, I feel re-charged and ready to tackle the last bit of my thesis project. I hope the new found energy level is strong enough to carry me through to graduation. After not doing any yoga for 3 weeks, it'll be interesting to see how it feels once I start it again. I am looking forward to establishing a routine once again but am hoping for new thoughts about my old life. I'm a greedy person I guess.. greedy about new thoughts, ideas and sensations. It's what keeps me going :)
Don't get me wrong; I still believe in the value of science. In the alternative therapy/holistic wellness world both practitioners and patients / customers / students seem to have a lot of difficulty distinguishing between the effective aspects from the completely BS aspects. It's just that being so rigorous, a scientific study first has to reduce any problem into a simple testable situation where all variables except for one are controlled. Not all problems can be simplified this way, especially with alternative therapies, where results are based on subjective patient experience. Neither the problems (say, chronic discomfort/pain) nor the solutions (a reduction in some aspects of the discomfort) can be easily measured by an instrument. In many cases, the simple fact that the practitioner paid attention to the patient / customer / student and/or simple human touch can reduce discomfort.
So, uh, why was I doing this again? I think I just got really sick of the BS in academia. Also, studying a single topic that no one around me cares about (both in every day life and even within my lab/school) became hell three years into my studies. I was in serious depression for a long time, while my family just thought I was a spoiled brat acting up. Once I found yoga, the amount of available reference materials, company and support made this activity seemed like a 7-star all-inclusive resort, and I hurled myself at it. People who don't practice yoga still didn't care about my new-found passion, but at least there's a classroom of people + an online community that shared my obsession.
Yoga provided comfort and pampering when I was feeling emotionally isolated and helpless. But it couldn't help me focus on my project. It took this grand trip to provide me the motivation to really want to finish my grad student way of living and move on with life. It was really hard to focus toward the end of last year. All I could think of all day long was my evening yoga classes. I hope this year I can actually focus on my thesis during day time and only think about yoga during the actual yoga classes. Nobel mentioned about energy levels being low on days without yoga practice. My energy level hypes up after yoga in the evening, but if I practice yoga in the morning, I often need a nap afterwards. I noticed that while I was traveling, my energy level and alertness could be quite high throughout the day for many days in a row. I think it's because of all the stimulations of new surroundings, plus the fact that the tour leader took all the stressful factors (finding transportation and accommodation, planning the itinerary, considering safety issues) out of my trip. I was so "awake" and so receptive to new sights, smell, and hearing for such a prolonged period of time at once, it was like being on drugs without the side effects.
Now that I am back home, I feel re-charged and ready to tackle the last bit of my thesis project. I hope the new found energy level is strong enough to carry me through to graduation. After not doing any yoga for 3 weeks, it'll be interesting to see how it feels once I start it again. I am looking forward to establishing a routine once again but am hoping for new thoughts about my old life. I'm a greedy person I guess.. greedy about new thoughts, ideas and sensations. It's what keeps me going :)
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